Data for food fortification programs

Nutritionists generally maintain that food intake surveys are the gold standard for collecting individual food consumption data. Food intake surveys, however, are expensive, difficult to administer, and subject to considerable measurement error. There is now increasing recognition that Household Income and Expenditures Surveys (HIES) are an alternative that can provide indirect measures of food consumption. Although a number of characteristics of current HIES instruments have been identified as common shortcomings for designing and assessing fortification programs, these shortcomings can be eliminated or ameliorated with relatively minor modifications. The project aimed to develop guidelines to help improve HIES as a tool for designing and assessing fortification programs.

Project status:

Closed

Sponsor(s):

World Bank Development Grant Facility, Grant No 4001009-06, administered by the PARIS21 Secretariat at OECD

These guidelines are intended to help improve household income and expenditure surveys as a tool for designing and assessing fortification programs, and thereby aid in accelerating the development of more evidence-based fortification programs.

One-third of the world’s population suffers from micronutrient deficiencies due primarily to inadequate dietary intake. Food fortification is often touted as the most promising short- to medium-term strategy
for combating these deficiencies. Despite its appealing characteristics, progress in fortification has been slow. The objective of the paper is to assess the potential of household food purchase data to fill the food-consumption information gap, which has been an important factor contributing to the slow growth of fortification programs. (Paper published in: Food and Nutrition Bulletin, vol. 29, no. 4).

The constrained evidence base of food and nutrition policy-making compromises nutrition programs. Nutrition policy-making must do better than relying exclusively on Food and Agriculture Organization Food Balance Sheets. The strategy of relying on observed weighed food record or 24-hour recall surveys has not proven practical either; they remain few in number, generally not nationally representative, and of dubious
external validity. Although Household Consumption and Expenditures Surveys (HCES) have shortcomings, they are increasingly being used to address this information gap. The objective of the paper is to promote dialog within the nutrition community, and between it and the greater community of HCES stakeholders, in order to identify their shared agenda and develop a strategy to improve HCES for analyzing food and nutrition issues. (Paper published in: : Food & Nutrition Bulletin, Volume 33, Supplement 2, September 2012 , pp. 242S-251S(10))